


rotting roots

by shuofthewind



Series: Le Monde Solaire [5]
Category: The Hobbit (Jackson Movies), The Hobbit - All Media Types, The Hobbit - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: F/M, Female Bilbo, Mirkwood, Pre-Relationship, Pre-Tauriel, sort of
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-23
Updated: 2015-02-23
Packaged: 2018-03-14 17:41:59
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,899
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3419741
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shuofthewind/pseuds/shuofthewind
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Before meeting Tauriel in Mirkwood, Blue finds one of her dwarves. And then stripping happens. </p><p>[<em>There ought to be some sort of signage in this place, she thinks—directions carved into walls, or something of the kind. In fact, carvings that read Captured Dwarves, This Way wouldn’t go amiss in the slightest. That, or Kitchens To The Right, because her stomach has never been so small.</em>]</p>
            </blockquote>





	rotting roots

**Author's Note:**

> So there will be an immediate sequel to this bit (or if not immediate than a "takes place within three days of this" sequel) where Blue meets Tauriel, because y'all have been asking for that. :D It should be up by this time tomorrow. It's halfway done right now, but it's also 1am, and I haven't slept in days, so...
> 
> Yay for flashbacks? 
> 
> Kind of a mix between movie!Mirkwood and book!Mirkwood because I find it illogical that the elves would put all the dwarves right next to each other a la the movie but I also really like where Kíli's cell is located in DoS so I kept that. (ALL OF YOUR CANONS ARE CORRUPTED BY MEEEEEEE.)
> 
>  _Nogoth_ means 'dwarf' in Sindarin; _negyth_ means, predictably, 'dwarves.'
> 
> Also I have a lot of deep headcanons about dwarven tattoo/piercing cultures so if you want to have like a million pages of thoughts on that hit me up anywhere. :D 
> 
> Unbeta'ed. Bite me.

It’s been a week and three days since she’s found even a single hint of her dwarves, and Blue is beginning to wonder if she’s ever going to see any of them again.

The halls of Mirkwood are labyrinthine and beautiful, elegantly carved. She’s drawing a map of them in her head, trying to keep all the passages straight, but it’s impossible; there’s something about the world of the ring that makes it hard to think, and she keeps seeing spider-webs out of the corner of her eye, thick and glistening and fresh. She has to duck into closets and behind pillars and take the ring off when that happens, even if it’s only for a moment or two, and she’s always so frightfully cold when she manages it. Blue can’t remember Rivendell being this cold. Maybe wood-elves like a bit of a frost to curl their toes, but she can’t say that she enjoys it particularly much.

She’s never been so thankful that Belladonna had insisted on teaching her a bit of Sindarin. Sometimes she catches the word _nogoth_ (or _negyth_ , which is even better) but by the time she catches up the elf that’s said it has usually vanished off into places unknown. There ought to be some sort of signage in this place, she thinks—directions carved into walls, or something of the kind. In fact, carvings that read _Captured Dwarves, This Way_ wouldn’t go amiss in the slightest. That, or _Kitchens To The Right_ , because her stomach has never been so small. She can’t count the number of times that she’s had to duck into a side passage to argue with her grumbling stomach—and if that doesn’t sound mad, then she’ll eat Bofur’s hat. (She still has it, by the way. Somehow he’d managed to drop it during the fight with the spiders. It keeps her ears warm, at least.) There’ll only be so many times she’ll stumble conveniently over some tray left outside someone’s door, and she’d eaten the cram Kíli liked to sneak into her pockets on the second or third day.

She stops dead in the middle of the corridor. _Likes_. Not _liked._ The cram Kíli _likes_ to sneak into her pockets. Her eyes sting. “He’s not dead,” she whispers to herself, and then again, fiercely: “ _He’s not dead_.”

He can’t be dead. She’d know if something’s happened. She would _know_.

Out of the corner of her eye, silver flashes. There’s an elf, thin and young with dark hair, carrying a tray with a single ceramic plate and a pitcher of water. Blue trails after him without thinking about it, the way she’s done a hundred times, a thousand times, and this time she’s in luck; about five hundred yards back the way she’d been coming from, the elf stops, produces a ring of keys from nowhere, and unlocks a door she’d not noticed before, half hidden behind a carved tree root. She slips through the crack just before he closes it behind him, and waits until the elf’s six stairs ahead before following him down deeper into the dark.

It smells dank, down here. Not foul, not like the goblin tunnels, but…damp, like bad earth and molding things. The staircase doesn’t quite seem to end. Finally, they come to the bottom; the elf turns right, and then left, and then right again, and suddenly they’re in a wide open space, with paths carved from the roots of the Mirkwood trees. The wood tingles under her toes. _Even here,_ she realizes, fighting the urge to stroke the roots, sink her fingers into the earth. _Even here the forest is ill._ The elves seem not to have noticed; there are a handful of them wandering, bright gleams of movement in the grey misty world of the ring, and they seem content here, but she can see dark spaces where there ought to be light. Her heart squeezes. The earth is a clean thing, made by the Green Mother to nourish all life, and the Eldar are its caretakers same as any other race; why hasn’t Thranduil noticed? Why haven’t any of them?

Spider’s webs glint out of the corner of her eye, but when she turns, her hand on Sting’s hilt, there’s nothing there.

The elf with the tray has nearly passed out of sight. Blue has to jog to catch up with him, and she refuses to acknowledge how dizzy it makes her, to move so quickly. A left, she thinks, and then another right, and then they come to a small staircase with a set of iron bars beside it. The elf mutters something under his breath in Sindarin—it sounds like an insult—and then sets the tray on the ground, pushing the plate beneath the ironwork door, and settling the ceramic pitcher of water just inside the cell.

Her heart is pounding. Blue presses herself close against the wall as the elf strides past again, unable to breathe. Is it possible? _Could_ it be possible? Days and days of nothing, and she’d almost begun to believe she’d imagined the whole Quest aside from the ring, but now there is a cell and a prisoner and the mutter of _nogoth,_ and it could all be a dream but she hopes it isn’t, oh, she hopes so desperately that it’s not.

Blue creeps forward as soon as she can catch her breath, her hands pressed hard against the hardened earth of the walls. The dwarf in the cell— _it is a dwarf, it is, one of my dwarves_ —hasn’t moved from the wall; he knocks his head against it once, twice, and huffs out something under his breath that sounds very much like a curse Thorin likes to use when the ponies step on his feet. She must make some sort of noise, though, because in the next instant he’s lifted his head, staring just to her left, eyes narrowed and lips parted. Every ounce of panic and terror and fear goes out of her in a rush, leaving her knees weak, because it’s Kíli, it’s _Kíli,_ and her heart hammers in her throat in time with the knowledge of it. _Kíli, Kíli, Kíli._ Blue glances back up the path, then up and around (elves do so like their high vantage points) before thumbing off her ring and slinking to the bars of the cage.

“ _Blue_ ,” he says, and he’s at the door in an instant, stretching out with one hand between the bars. She catches it between hers without thinking about it, and then nearly lets go again when the heat of his skin stings; she’s colder than she ever imagined, and she realizes she’s shivering at the same moment Kíli makes a soft, desperate sound. He reaches out, tugs Bofur's hat off her head, and hooks strands of hair behind her ears. “I knew you’d come. I knew—Durin’s teeth, you’re freezing, what happened?”

“I followed them when they took you.” Her teeth are chattering. “I stayed far enough behind that they didn’t see me, snuck in, but they’d already locked you up by the time I finally managed to find a way in. I couldn’t find you. I couldn’t find any of you. You’re the first.”

Kíli sighs, and searches her face. His fingers tighten around hers. “You’re all right?”

“Are you well?” she asks at the same time. He looks a little better than she remembers him being, wandering in circles in Mirkwood. His cheeks have filled back out. “You’re better?”

“I’m fine.” He touches her jaw, and then sets a burning hand to the back of her neck. “You’ve not eaten. You’re too pale. How have you been hiding all this time?”

“I found something in the goblin tunnels,” she tells him. “A magic ring. I—I walk unseen when I wear it. It’s just—the magic of it is—is terribly cold.”

His eyes widen. Kíli rubs his thumb in soothing circles against the nape of her neck, and her heart leaps up into her throat just to spite her. Then he pulls away for just a moment, fumbling at the strings of the collar of his tunic. She’s not quite certain what it is he’s doing until he undoes the belt and tugs the whole thing up over his head. Blue turns red enough for her ears to burn, and turns her back as swiftly as she can without falling off her own feet. “ _Kíli_!”

There’s a rustling noise from behind her, and then she’s engulfed in a tunic that is several sizes too large and smells of sweat and dirt and Kíli. It’s _warm_ , though, and in spite of herself she hides her face in the collar for a moment to thaw her nose before turning to just barely peek at him. She’s seen all the dwarves sans apparel before—it seems quite normal for dwarrow to strip at the slightest opportunity and not have a single ounce of shame in their own nudity, regardless of who might be watching—but she’s never allowed herself to actually _look,_ especially not when it came to Kíli. She snatches at the hem of the tunic, trying to pull it back over her head. “Kíli, I can’t take this, what if you catch a cold?”

“Dwarrow don’t get sick,” he says, and yanks it back down over her head again. “But you’re going to shake yourself to death if you don’t warm up, and the elves took my coat and everything away when they realized I had picks sewn into the hems.”

“You did?”

“Well, that and I threw plates at their heads.” He grins at her. She can manage this, she tells herself. She just needs to watch his face, and not let her eyes dip lower. Her cheeks are aching. “They started giving me ceramic ones after that and not metal ones.”

“You’re a beast,” she tells him, but her lips are twitching anyway. Kíli beams at her, and it hits her all over again, the bone-deep relief of it. _I’ve found him_ , she thinks, and she reaches out to him without thinking about it, tracing her fingers over his cheek. He goes still, the smile fading, his eyes fixed on hers. Kíli turns into her palm, and she thinks his lips might have just brushed against her skin. But then she thinks she’s imagined it.

“I found you,” she says, her voice shaking. “I thought I wouldn’t.”

“I knew you would,” he replies. “You’ll find us a way out, too. You’ll see.”

“The whole place is guarded. I’d be more likely to find a way out of Smaug’s treasure horde.” It’s the wrong thing to say; he winces a little, staring over her shoulder at something she can’t see. Blue goes to take her hand away, and he covers it with his own, pressing it close to his jaw. Kíli shakes his head.

“You’ll find a way out,” he says again. “I know you will.”

“You have too much faith in me.”

“You don’t have enough in yourself.” He starts counting off on his free fingers. “The trolls—”

“I nearly managed to get all of us cooked—”

“The goblin caves, your magic ring—thanks for mentioning that earlier, by the way—”

“It wasn’t as though—”

“Saving Thorin—”

“—somebody had to do something—”

“Stop being so stubborn!” He’s _laughing_ , the bastard. Kíli squeezes her hand. “You’re extraordinarily talented at finding us ways out of terrible fixes. You’ll manage this one too, I know it.”

Blue ducks her head to hide behind her hair, her smile trembling and teary. “Don’t say things like that,” she tells him, her voice cracking. “I’m only a very ordinary hobbit, and a very hungry one at that. Hand over some of your rations this instant.”

There’s only a few things—bread that the elves probably think is stale but is only a few days old, dried venison that’s barely worth the name, and water—but it’s more in one sitting than she’s had for days, and she inhales half of it before realizing that Kíli probably only gets a single serving a day. He refuses to eat any of it, though; he seems content to sit with his back to the wall, his bare shoulder pressed against the bars, and to just look at her, and she wonders how bored he’s been that a bit of a thing like her is this much entertainment. Finally, once she has a bit of food in her stomach and doesn’t feel quite so much like she’s shaking herself to death, she tries to give him the tunic back, but he refuses. “Dwarrow are meant for cold stone and long tunnels,” he says. “’m not cold at all. Keep it for a while.”

“But what if someone comes by to find you—” She flutters her hand at his torso, trying _very hard_ not to look at it. She’s done spectacularly well so far; she’s caught a glimpse of a scar on his shoulder, the hair of his chest, a curl of ink over his collarbone that looks like a very unhobbity tattoo, but she hasn’t seen much else. “—well, like that?”

“Then they can get an eyeful if they like. I don’t mind.”

“ _Kíli_!”

His (lovely, lovely, _lovely_ ) shoulders are shaking with suppressed laughter. Blue whacks him without thinking about it, and then flushes horribly when her fingertips graze the light hair that feathers over the curve of his collarbone. It’s softer than she thought it would be, she realizes in a distant sort of way. She turns before he can see how red she is. “You’re the most horrid—insufferable—”

“Lovable,” he carols behind her, his voice cracking a little with the effort to keep from cackling.

“ _—horrible—_ ”

“They won’t notice. There’s only a patrol once every four hours or so. Very regular. Now that they’ve fed us they won’t be back for a while.”  

She mutters under her breath.

“Blue.” A hand rests on hers. She looks up, and then away again. “Stay until you’re a bit warmer. Please?”

She can’t say no. She can almost never say no to him. Blue sighs, and leans over to knock her temple against the iron bars of his cell. The floor is cold against her bum, but his tunic’s warm, still, and Kíli’s alive, his fingers thin and strong and wrapped around hers. She can hear him breathing. It’s too vivid to be a dream. “I have to find everyone else,” she says. “Thorin, the others. I can’t just stop at you. If I don’t find them—”

“Half an hour,” he says. Then: “An hour. Just stay an hour.”

“An hour.” It seems like a glorious waste of time to her, but she can’t seem to budge herself from this spot. “An hour shouldn’t hurt.” She hesitates. “I can’t leave the ring off. If a guard comes—”

“—they won’t—”

“But what if there’s an accident, or a change of shift, or someone’s overeager?” _I can’t be caught_. She doesn’t say it, but she can tell he knows exactly what she’s thinking, because he bites his lip and scuffs a hand through his hair as though he’d like nothing better than to hit something. Then Kíli tangles his fingers in her hair again. She turns just enough so that she’s facing him when he gently taps his forehead against hers. It’s awkward, through the bars, but there’s just enough space for them to manage it, even if there’s cold metal framing her temples. She can taste his breath on her lips, and it’s making her tremble.

“An hour,” he says. “Half with the ring, half without. And the half without comes first, so you don’t get the chills. They won’t come, I swear it, and if I hear them, I’ll put it on you myself.”

Blue nods. There’s a fleck of a scab on the side of his nose that she’d not noticed before, and for some reason it fascinates her. She closes her eyes, and lets out a shaky sigh.

“Here,” he says, and then something cool and ovular is being pressed into her palm. “Take this, before I forget.”

“What is it?” She pulls away, tracing over the carved runes with one finger. “I’ve never seen you with this.”

“It’s something my mother gave me.” He closes her fingers over it, holding her hand in both of his. His head is bent, hair shading his face; she can’t make out his expression. “When I left. It’s a runestone, a good luck charm. It’ll keep you safe.”

Her throat tightens. “Kíli, I can’t take this.”

“Don’t you dare give it back now.” He squeezes her hand. “You give it back when we’re out of here, and not before. It’s a loan, mind. Not permanent.” He eyes her, and then the corner of his mouth lifts. “Sleep, Blue. I’ll stand watch.”

“But what about—”

“Sleep,” he says again. Blue frowns at him, and then she settles against the bars, pressing her shoulder against his as best she can. The runestone takes the heat of her hand in minutes, and soon it feels like a part of her, warm and smooth and firm. She leans closer, ignoring the way she can feel Kíli’s breath ghosting over her hair, and closes her eyes.

For the first time since their capture, she sleeps without nightmares.

**Author's Note:**

> Blue is so thick I swear to god


End file.
